Okay, so I have searched on the Internet how to optmiise linux because I want to install it on my server, but to no avail.

Can anyone help me elimiate uneeded programs, services, etc.. from linux (FC 4 if that helps)

The server will be used to run Linux DC++ and BitTorrent, nothing else, so all email, games, editors, multimedia apps are out.

The Fedora installation system has a "Minimal" option, which will give you a command-line system with networking and little else. You can then use yum to install any extra software that you actually want on the system:

http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/fedora...ype-notes.html

Find out what programs are installed and want to remove.

Then remove it...

You can also shut down those services that you're not using instead of removing them, if you wanted to. All they'll do it sit there and take up space on your hard-drive.

Thnx for your help, I'll try that, but how do I find out what programs I don't need? DO I just search the 'net and find out what they do?

By coincidence, this article in Fedora Weekly News tells what the services do:

http://fedoranews.org/mediawiki/inde...n_I_Disable%3F

Bear in mind, though, that Internet connections are a order of magnitude slower than the internal connections of the machine, so provided that you stay within the limits of the hardware you can only significantly improve the network performance by adjusting the connection (Quality of Service, more bandwidth etc.).

As Linux~Powered says, unused applications just use up storage space. You can remove whole groups/classes of applications with Add/Remove Applications and yum if you want to, though.

"Services," as they are called in Windows (they are "daemons" on Linux) come into play in one of two ways:

1. During startup, they are mentioned by one of the Snn.. symbolic-links in (say) /etc/rc5.d. (Your directory may vary.) These programs are started at boot-time during the initialization process.
2. The service can be started by (say) xinetd whenever a packet arrives on a certain port. These are defined in (say) /etc/xinetd.d. (The idea here is that you don't have to have a bunch of extra daemons hanging around "just in case" they are actually requested. They're only started, by xinetd, if they just-now actually have been requested...)

As far as performance is concerned, well, "an idle process really doesn't take up much resources." But for security, you definitely want to know which daemons you have defined, and why and when they run. Any daemon that you do not know about, and do not need, is an unnecessary avenue by which a clever intruder might be able to break in to your system.

Thanks guys for your replies.

I wanted to do this because we have only got 18GB HDD and 128MB SD RAM running on a PIII 650MHz

I need all the resources, plus it helps boot times